Forest: I See You Everywhere

Seven hypnotic and erratic fugue-like miniatures. Seemingly harmless at the beginning, they become increasingly intense until they culminate in a psychological kaleidoscope. Grandfather is silent – is he still alive? A man talks to a wardrobe – why? Absent people creep ghost-like into the lives and conversations of couples and families. They are the lost, the repressed and the missing. Young men shock their mothers – one with love, the other with contempt (as well as a sober presentation of the theory that God is a kind of Gandalf). Finally, there is a charlatan who drives naïve sick people to their deaths. It is hard to say who is the victim here and who is to blame. If people are spheres, can they ever meet? Bence Fliegauf skilfully continues his anthropological exploration in the micro-realist style of his 2003 feature debut Forest. Amateurs worked with professionals on this next-to-no-budget film for which there was many an inspiration – from John Cassavetes to Raymond Carver and Péter Nádas. Feverish dialogue, through which the wind of anarchy blows, dominates the scene. Fliegauf’s is a style that aggravates and magnetises, that prescribes claustrophobic closeness yet embraces all that is open. (Berlinale)